October 6, 2016

(credit: ANA)

A concept for remote-controlled “avatar” humanoid robots, presented by ANA, Japan’s largest airline, was named one of the three “top prize concept” finalists at XPRIZE’s recent inaugural Visioneers event.

The ANA AVATAR Team, led by scientist Harry Kloor, PhD, presented an ambitious vision of a future in which human pilots would hear, see, talk, touch, and feel as if a humanoid robotic body were their own — instantaneously across the globe and beyond. Ray Kurzweil is Co-Prize Developer.

“The ANA team presented a compelling AVATAR XPRIZE concept,” said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, executive chairman and founder of XPRIZE. “The Avatar XPRIZE will initiate a revolution in the way we work, travel, explore and interact with each other.”

“The top three Visioneers teams, with prize concepts in the areas of cancer, avatars, and ALS, have been certified by XPRIZE as ‘ready to launch’ and we look forward to working with the teams to finalize the prize designs, secure the necessary funding, and launch one or all of these world-changing competitions,” Marcus Shingles, CEO of XPRIZE told KurzweilAI.

Other top concepts were presented by Deloitte and Caterpillar for conquering cancer and ALS, respectively. The Visioneers Summit is intended to help the XPRIZE strategic approach evolve and advance its prize designs.

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Human history up to this point leads my thinking down a much darker path. With the ability to put “boots on the ground” at no risk, why wouldn’t wealthy countries (or in the future, transnational corporate entities) send in avatar armies to subjugate any less technologically advanced group, country, religion,etc. that was not behaving in the fashion that the rich and powerful felt appropriate? Still, I hope for their use in future exploration of our solar system and beyond.

I like the idea of having my brain safely stored alive at the end of my body’s life. A brain computer interface would link me to my avatars, so I could be independent and care for myself. Future modern medical technology would maintain and improve my aging brain to be better than ever. Meanwhile I could remotely connect to avatars for many other purposes. Like safely walking into the Fukashima Nuclear Reactor plant to stop radiation leakage.
The ANA AVATAR would be an important step to making this real and useful!

We need to change the way we think about our drug addicts. And the people who are lost to any compassion, because of power and money. And that is rappent through the whole system..The drug dealers are lost to us, because they have lost the ability to care for anyone else, like the addicts, they have lost there soul.
Because of drugs our youth have lost any hope.
We need to legalize all drugs, and help the addicts.
We can do this if we try.
Just because powerful groups are keeping there power by ”the war on drugs”,,,,doesn’t mean we can’t put a paradigme into the system, ‘
And work this out…someday…If there is no money in selling drugs, Lot’s of things would change…..
Avatars could lead addicts out of inner city hell holes, and into hospitals…
They could talk drug lords into, some kind of deal where they don’t have to shoot there way out. They live to lean a better way ,,someday…

We already have the legal framework and the medical framework in place to support the legalization of all narcotics. The most destructive drug, the most violent drug and the most socially damaging drug is a drug called alcohol. It alone results in more violent crimes than all of the other narcotics combined, there are no intelligent defenses for why we can not legalize all narcotics.
We also have one of the most dramatic and realistic clinical trials on the results of outlawing drugs when we put into place prohibition.
I agree with you 100%, by legalizing all of the narcotics we would in one Swift broad sweeping motion eliminate a staggering amount of violence in the country.
Canada, my home and native land,is looking at legalizing all drugs, to be more specific Vancouver BC…
There is always going to be a certain percent of people that will become addicted to any drug, like alcohol, that number hovers around 5% depending on Whose stats your reading but that number doesn’t change whether the drugs are legal or illegal.. however the situation, the quality of the drugs, the tax revenue generated from the sale of legal drugs does change dramatically and gives us a lot more ways financially to help the people that are addicted.
How we deal with the displacement of the jobs from the people that are selling the drugs is somwhat more complicated and a separate conversation, however with the tax revenue generated from the sale of legal drugs we would certainly have the financial means to back whatever method we came up with to help resolve that issue…

After reviewing the envisioned applications (doctor, chef, musician, athlete, chef, orator etc) as depicted on the X prize website, something else that will be far more likely comes to mind. The Special forces soldier avatar. An avatar that will kick down doors in the city of Mosul and expeditiously murder members of ISIS, or any other group deemed worthy of extermination by the state. For better and for worse, such urban warfare is a logical extension of the drone warfare that we have today.

If I understand what is being described here, another fascinating application might be safely orbiting a few hundred miles above an astronomical body while your avatar explores the surface. No worry about dangers…you could even fly. With enough sensors (like a human nervous system) and adequate band with the experience might be as real as if you were actually there. What a way to explore the universe!! I can’t wait but at almost age 75, my hope clings to Alcor Life Extension Foundation to get me to that time…maybe…hopefully (a plug for cryonics).

Along with SOC/SOF, cops. Right now we understand why cops don’t walk around in easy to identify drug neighborhoods. A SWAT team should ideally be sent into each one, but who wants to spend a cop life each week and face headlines like “city kills more blacks in drug war.”

The cop avatar could be Mr Friendly, collect lots of intel, and take out as many drug dealers as can be identified without killing any. Some killings would be done by criminals shooting wildly. Some would be shooting to intentionally kill civilians so as to be able to blame cops for their deaths.

To counter that, further tech and avatars would be used to protect others beyond the immediate targets. It would evolve as a tactic, but immediately works as a lower causality effort that would greatly suppress street crime.

I think you fully on target with this assessment. It can be used for tremendous good. I think it will evolve into something very beneficial to stem violence. Non lethal force will only follow “frendly” “constructive” encounters. That’s long term. Short term there will be highly targeted violence because it’s expedient, and humans often prefer what’s expedient to what’s best. Later this conduct will evolve.

Doc: I hope you’re right, but how long would it be
before the first crime-fighting avatars turn up at an
all-avatar drug den? Avatar-on-avatar action, so to
speak. This could be followed by avatar-assisted burglaries, rapes and murders; all with minimal risk to the criminal.

And who’s to say who will be the first to take advantage of (or develop) such technology?

Good points you raise about potential problems with real “Ana’s.” A previous post in this thread hit where my mind usually searches, which is previous Sci Fi reading or watching. Any engineers or any who read about engineering know about brainstorming, which would involve your point. Let the brain storm and thunder with rain. Each drop is any old idea even remotely related to the point. I got intro’d into brainstorming formally in Eng 101 in an early, and shortly later aborted college career a million years ago

Of course all in the brainstorming group still filter to a great degree, but much more than otherwise is now on the table. Your ideas would be accompanied by any problematic Ana issues that could be thunk of. Then all break up into groups to try to mitigate this or that one from the notecard pile of trouble. I search Sci Fi and my imagination and I easily fall on Ana’s side.

Like fire, pointed sticks and the internet, many – gosh! all – coins have two sides. Yet even the lowly coin is too durn useful to set aside. So too with Ana, and I think industry knows this. Among industry it makes sense for a Japanese airline to be on top of this. That country is so much further into humanoid robots than any other.

Yes this is exactly what we need, we need better more inventive ways of traveling to Exotic lands, meeting exotic people, and kicking in their front door and murdering them in their living room! Great idea…

Lol… possibly…
However I think we’ve learned a lot of lessons from arguably the most beneficial invention, fire. Fire protected us, kept us safe and warm, allowed us to develop our neocortex… And sure it was eventually use as a very successful weapon of warfare. technology is always a double-edged sword… I say we swing on!